


say what you want about me

by ivorydice



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, M/M, Slice of Life, Slight making out, Swearing, i can't believe i wrote ardynoct fluff, i don't even know what this fic is lol, slightest hint of plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 13:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15752622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorydice/pseuds/ivorydice
Summary: Secret lovers? - Is there a secret love affair between Crown Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum and the Imperial Chancellor Ardyn Izunia? Read pg 10 to find out!Ardyn stared at the small, tidy stack of magazines on Noctis's coffee table, feeling a strange mixture of weariness, curiosity and bewilderment.For Ardynoct Week 2018 Day 2: Insomnia's paparazzi think the Prince & the Chancellor of Niflheim are lovers.





	say what you want about me

**Author's Note:**

> I literally could not think of a title to save my life, please don't judge me too hard.
> 
> Image dumbass me beginning a fic, and finishing said fic, under the false belief that the prompt this was written for had a totally different word in it, thus changing everything completely. ~~it was supposed to be fucking paparazzi not tabloids/gossip magazines god damn it~~.
> 
> Also, imagine extra dumbass me, originally typing these notes in the summary box. Hi I'm new to writing and AO3, clearly.
> 
> Lol oh well ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

  

> **SECRET LOVERS? - Is there a secret love affair between Crown Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum and the Imperial Chancellor Ardyn Izunia? Read pg 10 to find out!**

  
Ardyn stared at the small, tidy stack of magazines on Noctis’s coffee table, feeling a strange mixture of weariness, curiosity and bewilderment.  
  
Firstly—he had to wonder what Noctis was doing with actual gossip and news magazines in his apartment. For all of his intelligence, he doubted the boy read anything other than those comic books he was unreasonably protective over. Were they just decoration? Left there for any guests to puzzle over like waiting at the dentist office?  
  
And secondly— _really_? They were amidst the most crucial parts of the peace talks, it had taken them years to reach this point, and _this_ was what the columns wanted to report on?  
  
How had they even come to this conclusion?  
  
The curiosity and bewilderment bled into concern. Well, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to see what they were saying. It concerned him, after all, and it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do while he waited for Noctis’s return.  
  
Ardyn plucked up the magazine, falling back onto the couch as he flicked through it. Oh look at that, there was a new bakery opening up a few streets away from here. How delightful.  
  
Ah, page ten. The article in question. Right then.  
 

> **_Are the Crown Prince and Imperial Chancellor secret, forbidden lovers? We have sources who certainly seem to think so!_ **

  
Already Ardyn was rolling his eyes. _Secret_ and _forbidden_. Words that were meant to tantalise and scandalise, meant to ensnare and incite gasps and hushed whispers. Did they really need to repeat the headline when there was no doubt citizens would be quickly thumbing through the pages to see this ‘evidence’?  
  
Ignoring the fact that he had just done so himself. Besides, he wasn’t finding out the latest gossip, he was assessing the situation.  
  
Well, perhaps he was a _little_ curious in the gossip for gossip’s sake. He blamed the old women from back home, so very long ago now. They had never been able to keep their mouths shut, and, oh, the _things_ they had spoken of. Well.  
 

> Has a forbidden romance blossomed amongst the continued peace talks between these two nations? Here at The Daily Insomnia, we were able to get in touch with a reliable source within the Citadel, and they certainly seem to think something is going on.
> 
> “They always seem to be meeting up with each other, any chance they get,” the source - who has chosen to remain anonymous - told us. “And it was strange at first. The moment meetings were over, the two of them would wander off to a corner together to talk quietly. Or they could be seen walking around the gardens later in the day.”

  
Goodness, they had only done that _the once_ , and that was because Noctis had been overly anxious about one particular meeting, paranoid that things would devolve into chaos and they would be right back to where they had started: in the middle of a war which would see to the end of the world.  
  
His fears, of course, had been completely unfounded. It had only been a release of tensions between some angry, harmless nobles, nothing more than that, and the following meetings had shown a steady improvement.  
  
Still. Noctis _had_ been shaken and nervous, only calming down after their peaceful walk through the gardens. It seemed that, even after all this time, he still held some fears and anxieties. Perhaps that was something they would have to address.  
  
Hardly scandalous, inappropriate behaviour anyway. Now, if he had done something like, say, pin Noctis down on the table in front of nobles and generals and the King and Emperor themselves and had defiled him right there and then, or if he had openly fucked him in the gardens where anyone and their mother could see—well maybe _then_ there would actually be something to this anonymous source’s claim of a secret affair.  
  
Well, there _was_ something to it, but this 'Citadel insider' certainly didn’t know that. And his tattling was rather concerning. He would have to inform Noctis of this little gossiper. If they were willing to share even trivial, harmless information such as this, then who knew what else they were willing to reveal.  
 

> Not only have they been seen close inside the Citadel, but there have also been numerous sightings of the two of them together outside. Paps have spotted them in many places. From having coffee in Insomnia, to the Chancellor escorting the Crown Prince around Gralea on the Royal Family’s visit to Niflheim just last year.  
>    
>  They briefly made headlines last year in Niflheim when Prince Noctis was caught ‘vandalising’ Chancellor Izunia’s convertible - a classic, limited run Niflheim-made automobile with an estimated value of 250,000 gil.

  
Two hundred and fifty thousand? Really? Well, that was interesting.  
  
Good lord though, just walking along the street was grounds for scandalous behaviour for these people. It seemed his concerns had been all for naught.  
  
Ardyn stared at the small photographs included at the sides of the paragraphs. Noctis, bundled up in winter clothing, cap over his head and pulled down as if that would do anything to hide who he was from Gralea’s own paparazzi. Crouched down next to Ardyn’s car, with a freshly applied moogle coating the metal of the passenger door.  
  


> Thankfully, an international scandal was narrowly averted and property damages avoided, as it was found it wasn’t actually graffiti. The Prince had merely stuck a car decal of a moogle to the Chancellor’s vehicle, easily removed if unwanted.

  
Funny enough, the article didn’t mention the fact that Ardyn had actually _kept_ the moogle decal, if only because the sight of it always brought up fond memories and Noctis never failed to laugh when he saw it.  
  
Gods. That foolish boy.  
 

> Speculation on the true nature of their relationship isn’t new, either. There have been countless theories posted to the internet, on blogs and social media websites. The last year or two has seen the rise in ‘fansites’ of the pair, particularly after ‘the moogle incident’ as it’s known to these webgoers.
> 
> As a result, there have been many videos uploaded to the popular sharing website Moogletube. From small clips taken by the public, to videos pointing out the tiny details in candid photographs of the two potential lovers, to videos outright examining their body language in public appearances.
> 
> One such ‘mootuber’, CaitlynsBodyTalks, is a professional in reading body language. In her spare time, she likes to upload her observations of celebrities and their interviews to the popular video site. In her video ‘The Prince and Chancellor Have Met Before??? (Not Clickbait)’ she examines the first time the Lucian Royal Family and the Emperor of Niflheim and his entourage met each other at the Citadel, an event that had been broadcasted worldwide for its monumental occasion.

  
Monumental indeed. He had spent _years_ orchestrating that event, slowly picking away at the inside of the imperial army, sabotaging them as silently as he could, plucking away any chance of success. Satisfied with every loss the Emperor had, watching his resolve slowly crumble under the force of the Kingsglaive, until he was backed into a corner with no other choice but to try for peace.  
  
Many lifetimes ago, that sort of plan would have been inconceivable. It was funny how things worked out.  
 

> In particular, Caitlyn focuses on the Prince himself and his very first handshake and introduction with the Chancellor, pointing out, “Oh yeah, these guys have definitely met before. In other videos, I’ve noticed Prince Noctis usually shows a slight hesitancy when he greets guests. His shoulders are drawn up, he gets this very guarded expression on his face, his motions are stiff.  
>    
>  “There’s none of that here. You can see it in his shoulders; he’s very relaxed, very calm, very confident, they both have good eye contact. And if I zoom in here—” at this point, she zooms in on a frozen shot of the Crown Prince’s face, moving her mouse pointer around near his eyes, and then his mouth, “You can see this sort of tilt to his lips, right here. This very amused stare as he looks at the Chancellor. You can see at this part, he tilts his head back just a little, exposes his throat, raises his eyebrows in this really playful way. It’s all subconscious behaviour, but it’s very telling.”

  
Ardyn remembered that particular visit. He remembered the curiosity he had felt, how much time beforehand he had pondered whether Noctis would _remember_ him or not, if his eyes would show any recognition when they met again for the first time in a while.  
  
The startling relief he had felt when Noctis _had_ , when he admitted, later that day, that all of his memories had returned to him only a year before they reunited.  
  
They had been so used to returning to the beginning over and over, to that first meeting in Galdin Quay, and then just a little earlier each time. First a few days earlier, then a week or two, then a month. It had become something _expected_. So it had been both surprising and disconcerting this time, to come back so much earlier than ever. He had had to wait for Noctis to be born this time.  
  
Still, it had all proven to have much more effective results.  
  


> “Now listen,” she continues, “This kid’s sixteen in this video. He’s never been out of the city, these separate nations have never met like this before. So how is he so confident around this guy, this supposed stranger?  
>    
>  “I’m gonna show you another clip now, of the Chancellor this time, and you can see the exact same thing happening with him. There’s a stiffness when he greets others, he’s very guarded, if a little overconfident. But the moment he’s around the Prince, there’s total relaxation. These two  _know_ each other.”

  
How _curious_ , that someone could gather so much from his body, and while not even in person at that. He hadn’t realised reading one’s body language could be so detailed. A useful trick to have, for certain.  
  
Of course, the fact that this Caitlyn girl didn’t seem to be aware that Noctis _had_ in fact been out of the city only once before, back after that pesky marilith attack when he was a child, meant she was either forgetful or not up to date on her facts. Not a completely reliable source to these gossipers then.  
  
He paused, wondering for a moment what might have happened if he had stepped in and actually succeeded in preventing that attack, what would have changed this time around. Of course, he had thought he had derailed it at the time, but the Emperor had proven to be slippery just that once, managing to surprise him by going through with it anyway.  
  
He couldn’t remember a time he had ever felt so enraged.  
  
Needless to say, the following planned attack on Tenebrae hadn’t worked out so well for the Emperor for such a disgusting display of arrogance. A few ‘faulty machines’ here and there, catching fire and exploding, one after the other, until every one of those pitiful attempts at magitek troopers had been in pieces and in flames before ever laying siege to Tenebrae.  
  
He could see why Noctis liked to train when he was angry. A little catharsis was good for the soul.  
 

> Caitlyn finishes the video off with this final comment: “Now, you guys know I’m not one for conspiracy theories and all that, but...this is weird. I mean it. This is weird, even for me. Yeah, you can just argue that maybe they have good chemistry. But I don’t think it’s that at all. Something’s going on here.”
> 
> Of course, despite theories of them having met before circling the internet, despite other theories of romance going on, it is possible that the two of them have developed a more familiar relationship over the past four years, an unlikely friendship considering the Chancellor is far older.
> 
> But we have another source from inside the Citadel who thinks otherwise.
> 
> “I’ve seen them together late at night,” they said. “Walking through the corridors or heading to each other’s rooms. And I don’t think they’re meeting for their own peace talks.”
> 
> What a potential romance between the two could spell for the coming end to the war between Lucis and Niflheim is currently unknown, and considering peace talks have been ongoing for some four years now, there are some concerns online about whether the Prince was taken advantage of when he was an underaged young man.
> 
> And as for a public reaction to such a relationship, talk online shows mixed feelings over the matter. While there appear to be quite a few in favour of it, there are some strong opposing voices making themselves heard, most notably expressing their distaste over the age gap between the two men.
> 
> We have reached out to the Citadel for an official statement on the matter, which has since gone unresponded.  
>    
>  Despite all evidence, we’ll still just have to wait and see what happens.

  
Well.  
  
What a considerable waste of his time.  
  
Although what did he expect from a magazine where the next article was another list of ‘evidence’, this time pointing out ‘the truth’ that a Crown City celebrity had, indeed, secretly had plastic surgery. These little busybodies, laying out their judgements on anyone and everyone.  
  
Just like those sniggering old women back home. Those _delightful_ women who had watched him grow, who had both praised him for what a nice young man he was becoming and then gossiped about the latest sinner he should pay a _friendly_ visit to, all in the same breath.  
  
What would they say about Noctis, he wondered.  
  
He knew, instantly. One look at him and they would gather and whisper, they would pull Ardyn down by his hair until he was level with them and they would whisper in his ear, _“What a delightful young man. He will be your ruin, little Ardyn. Your undoing.”_  
  
And they would be right. In more ways than one.  
  
A thud against the front door and jingling in the lock signalled Noctis’s return. Ardyn glanced over at the clock, curious. Nearly midnight. This was a little late, even for Noctis. He wondered if all meetings for internal affairs ran this late, or if something had happened that he wasn’t aware of.  
  
Noctis looked tired as he came into the living room, sighing and dumping his keys down on the table. He stopped, then tilted his head to see the front cover of the magazine in Ardyn’s hands. “Are you seriously reading that shit under my roof?”  
  
Ardyn raised an eyebrow at him, trying for an innocent expression, struggling to fight back a smirk. “It was simply laying there on the pile, taunting me with its words. I had no choice in the matter, you see.” He chuckled at Noctis’s doubtful look. “What can I say, even after all of these years, gossip is still one of my guilty pleasures.”  
  
“Weird guilty pleasure to have,” Noctis retorted. He shrugged out of his jacket with a groan, tossing it onto the end of the couch. Ardyn eyed it, marvelling to himself at this man, twenty years old - well, a lot older than _that_ in truth, though no one knew it but them - and he was still as messy as a moody teenager.  
  
“You couldn’t have had pizza as your guilty pleasure, instead?” Noctis was saying. “Pop music? Terrible choice in clothing? Oh, _wait_.”  
  
Ardyn tutted, turning the page of the magazine and taking in the next piece of gossip. Oh, look at that, the head of the Exineris plant in Lestallum was supposedly having an affair with the mechanic from Hammerhead. Was this really what passed for gossip and tabloids these days? People fucking in secret? Where were the deep scandals, the ones that had roots in the most obscure of places, the ones so strange you could only laugh at?  
  
Those old women wouldn’t have stood for this. Oh, how he missed them.  
  
“How’d you get in here anyway?” Noctis called, now with his head buried in the fridge. He came back out with a bottle of water and downed it as if he was a dehydrated man in the middle of the desert. Ardyn let his eyes drift down to the long curve of his throat.  
  
“The usual tricks,” he admitted after a moment. It wasn’t a hardship to sneak past anyone when one could stop time, and it was something he would never not take advantage of.  
  
Noctis snorted and nodded. “Of course. Been here long?”  
  
“No,” Ardyn said. “Why? So eager to be rid of me already? Am I that much of an eyesore?”  
  
“Nah,” Noctis rolled his eyes. “As long as you’re not stinkin’ up my apartment with your weird scourge mist, it’s all good.”  
  
Ah, polite as always.  
  
Noctis screwed the cap back onto the bottle and shuffled forwards, letting himself fall down next to Ardyn, sitting sideways to face him, head resting on the back of the couch. Up close, he looked exhausted, shadows smudging the skin under his eyes. “These peace talks are _killing_ me. They’re so boring.”  
  
Ardyn tilted his head. “I thought you were attending a meeting for internal matters.”  
  
“Yeah, but then we had a meeting after that, discussing the peace talks and our side of it.”  
  
“Ah, I see.” That would explain why he was so late in returning to his home then. “And there was no progression, I take it?”  
  
Noctis groaned. “Just old men talking around in circles, not answering each other’s questions, not seeing the bigger picture. Just. _So_ boring. And then Loqi accosted me afterwards when I was trying to leave the Citadel. Do you think he’s self-conscious about his height? He talks pretty big for someone so small.”  
  
Ardyn found himself chuckling. “It makes the bloodshed and destruction appear more exciting, doesn’t it?”  
  
“Fuck you, you promised we weren’t gonna do it that way ever again.”  
  
He certainly had, and, admittedly, even he was no longer eager to return to that way of trying to solve things. Clearly murdering each other wasn’t the way to finish this. They only ended up right back at the start.  
  
The only thing it was good for now was for resetting everything when they made their irreparable mistakes.  
  
“And I’m a man of my word, surely you know that by now,” Ardyn said. He reached out and tapped Noctis on the end of his nose gently, smirking at the way Noctis crossed his eyes and blinked at the action. “Just bear it a little while longer. We’ve never reached this point before.”  
  
Noctis sighed. “Alright, but if Loqi brings up his stupid family name once more, then I _will_ start a god damn war with him. Fate of the world be damned.”  
  
Ardyn chuckled again. “I think your father might have something to say about that, if you did.” He turned the page back to the gossip column about the two of them, moving the magazine over to Noctis. “Here, this might cheer you up.”  
  
Noctis was silent as he read it over, then let out a loud, undignified snort, running a hand over his face. “Oh my _god_ , seriously?”  
  
Ardyn smiled again, reaching out to tug on a stand of black hair. Something he found himself doing a lot of, recently. “I thought you’d like it.”  
  
“Come on, don’t these guys have anything better to do?” Noctis picked up the magazine to glare at the little accompanying pictures of the two of them together. “Two hundred and fifty thousand gil for your piece of shit car? Are they joking? Is that a typo?”  
  
“Manners,” Ardyn said. “She’s a classic.”  
  
Noctis snorted. “Yeah, sure.” He was silent again, eyes moving back and forth as he quickly read. “Oh my god, there’s no way I’d bang you in the Citadel. That’s just _weird_. And they think we were together when I was sixteen? Oh my god.”  
  
“You keep saying that,” Ardyn chuckled.  
  
“Where’d you find this crap anyway?”  
  
Ardyn pointed to the stack of magazines on the table. “It was on the top. Primed and ready for criticism. Although, I must say, I thought your tastes in reading material were far different than this.”  
  
“Fuck,” Noctis said, staring at the stack. “That means Ignis put it there. That means he wants to _talk_. About this. _Fuck_.”  
  
“Your advisor?” Ardyn smirked. “A bit of a passive aggressive move, I dare say.”  
  
Noctis groaned, but there was a fondness in his eyes even as he said, “You don’t know the half of it.” He went back to reading the magazine again, staring down at the pictures. He chuckled after a moment. “If they knew the truth, man—that’d blow their minds.”  
  
“Quite,” Ardyn agreed. “I can see the headlines now. ‘Time travelling secret lovers save the world from total annihilation’.”  
  
Noctis was side eyeing him, with that self-confident smirk, that _smugness_ that Ardyn should have been proud of but, somehow, found it rather intimidating instead. There was never anything good to come from that smirk. “Secret lovers, huh?” he said. “I thought we were, and I quote you exactly, fuck buddies.”  
  
Ardyn tutted again, picking up the magazine and tossing it over his shoulder, ignoring it as it noisily flapped away. “Fuck buddies,” he repeated slowly, ignoring that growing smirk, searching for the right words that _wouldn’t_ land him in a deeper mess with this egregious little man, “It sounds so harsh. So aggressive. It has a certain ugly ring to it, wouldn’t you agree?”  
  
Noctis nodded, humouring him. Smug.  
  
“Now, secret lovers,” Ardyn smirked at him, then reached out, grabbed Noctis by the waist and pulled him closer until the gap between them was considerably smaller. “Secret lovers just rolls off the tongue. It’s simply poetic. Lyrical.”  
  
“Oh, absolutely,” Noctis answered, then rolled his eyes. “God. A dozen lifetimes with you, and you’re still so annoying.”  
  
Ardyn raised an eyebrow at him. “What a hurtful thing to say to your secret lover.”  
  
Noctis snorted out a laugh, burying his face in Ardyn’s chest for a moment.  
  
Ardyn raised a hand, let his fingers play with the hair at the back of Noctis’s neck. “Let’s try and get it right this time,” he said, “And you’ll never have to put up with me again.”  
  
“Sweet freedom.” Noctis smiled up at him. His words were tough, they always were, but there was that growing softness in his eyes, that private amusement. That fondness.  
  
For the first five lifetimes, everything had been so violent, so hateful. They had been terribly angry and lashing out at each other, trying to win an unwinnable war. But now they grew closer still, and Ardyn was actually beginning to _feel_ things for this young thing. Hate and anger had been tossed aside a long time ago, frustration dissolving as they worked together to try and fix things when they realised the loop wouldn’t stop if they didn’t end with true peace.  
  
And where hate had once been, affection was now growing through instead.  
  
Perhaps secret lovers wasn’t such an inaccurate term after all.  
  
Noctis was mouthing at his throat, amourous little thing that he was, had _always_ been, even when this thing between them had begun two and a half lifetimes ago. Ardyn smiled to himself, humming as he said, “Feeling frisky tonight, are we?”  
  
Noctis chuckled against his neck. “Don’t pretend like you’re not down for it.”  
  
“I wouldn’t dare,” Ardyn shot back. He gripped the strands of hair curled around his fingers and pulled, bringing their lips together.  
  
It was always like the first time, full of fire and desperation and a need to be the dominant one. There was struggle like there always was, hands clawing and pulling at each other, Noctis’s teeth pulling at Ardyn’s lip, making him chuckle, and Ardyn’s fingers gripping tightly at Noctis’s hips where it would most likely bruise. In the beginning, there had been malice and hate and confusion behind every little thing, but now it always boiled down to need and only that.  
  
Noctis gave in like he always did, with a groan and his hands clenching in Ardyn’s clothes, climbing into his lap, practically melting into him. But even that could be a tantalising trick at times, meant to lower Ardyn’s guard, have him fooled into submitting. Noctis was as driven and unwavering in passion as he was in battle, and to have shared both of those parts of him felt like a divine blessing at times.  
  
They parted. Noctis looked a sight when he climbed off of Ardyn, breathless, taking a step back from the couch. Cheeks flushed, eyes bright, his hair a little messy. So very alluring and delectable, Ardyn could devour him right there.  
  
And he _knew_ it. Whether Ardyn had rubbed off on him over the years, or whether he was simply comfortable with himself these days, it didn’t matter. He _knew_ how to play Ardyn now, with a tilt of his lips and a little nod of his head. “Coming?” he said, sly and teasing. “Secret lover?”  
  
Ardyn’s feet crumpled over the discarded magazine as he followed Noctis’s satisfied laughter to the bedroom.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be a "are they/aren't they" kinda fic, but I wanted to write the Ardynoct kiss, and so I wrote the Ardynoct kiss.
> 
> I also know nothing about reading body language lol, but it's fascinating stuff.
> 
> I've probably left some mistakes, so I might come back to edit this later. If I've misrated this fic or missed out any necessary tags, feel free to let me know.
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3
> 
> You can find me [here](http://ivorydice.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
